I just want to thank the creators of DARK AGES for creating such a great background and Storyseeker for correcting my fics and helping me with great ideas and for the characters of his ficverse.
2. A German Story
Demona laughed, looking on the Phoenix Gate in her healthy claw.
"Phase 1," she said and then recited, "Deflegrate muri tempi et intervallia."
After she had spoken the spell for activating the gate, she vanished anywhere into the time-stream.
***
She stood in front of a gargoyle called the Clever Sister by the clan. The gargoyle had two long horns rising from her forehead and in a woman's eyes, a much too modest tunic.
Slowly, she took the machine, which didn't fit in this time, from her bag and activated it. A laser came out of the machine and scanned the sleeping gargoyle, taking the information it needed to create a three dimensional picture on the monitor.
The woman pushed a button and saved this data like she had done already, both on this day and the day before with half of the clan and would do so with the rest of the clan soon enough.
"Phase2,"
~ Soon. ~
***
The fog hadn't settled down yet when the career went alive again and showed how the block of stone had changed. Coming nearer, the woman studied it seriously, even touched it and noticed that it was still hot, and finally allowed herself a small smile.
She stood in front of a statue, the statue of a male gargoyle with a long crest above his head who was supposed to be death, killed in a terrible massacre 1000 years ago.
~ Perfect! ~ The woman thought, her smile increasing, hearing already the sound of another stone quart being transported to the career, like another 100 would be in the next hours.
"Phase 3," she whispered to herself and grabbed in her jacket, a magic talisman with the picture of a Phoenix on it.
***
"Demona, what do you want?" Xanatos asked as relaxed as possible.
"Your assistance." Demona replied.
***
"Goliath never told me that your clan was... is so large." Xanatos noticed
Demona looked angrily on the human. "It wasn't," she admitted. "His clan wasn't so large, but I have added the gargoyles of the clan I had in Moray to this. So there are over 50 more gargoyles than his clan had back then."
***
"Wait here and greet Hudson from me." She ordered and then grabbed her talisman.
"Deflegrate muri tempi et intervallia."
With this, she vanished and left an angry gargoyle snarling behind.
~ How dare her! ~
To say that the teacher was furious would be an understatement. Never, since the time she had learned from her own teacher as a youngster, had she ever been treated in this way!
Angrily, she shred parts of the bed under her into rags while standing up.
~ If that was truly you redhead, ~ the teacher thought angrily, ~then I seemingly have to teach you again on how to respect your elders. ~
***
Demona saw how Darlene changed into a human for her human lover. Now on the roof she starred down on the streets, without really noticing anything until her daughter and her.... human lover left the building.
Demona vanishes with the Phoenix Gate.
***
"I won't let you go daughter, not this time," Demona assured her. "But we can't stay here."
"I noticed you were packing," Darlene said. "To be honest, I had not thought that you would still be living here. Why do you go now?"
Demona sighed.
"I have had trouble with the local clan and don't want to have to kill one of them," she lied. "Besides, I think it is time for a change of scenery for me... I have lived here too long."
"Where to?"
"Berlin," Demona explained.
***A New Start and Old Pain***
07.04.98; 21:34; Destine Mansion in Potsdam:
Demona leaned above the remains of a creature not destined to live in this reality. It was the size of a football, but this football had a skin that was like brown leather and a large eye in the middle of its round body, which made eleven eyes together with its ten other eyes around its head.
It was an *Observer*, a sort of demon that Demona had once read about in one of her books, just that this sort of demon only existed in the lowest places of hell. Luckily, Demona had had a sharp sword in reach of her claws so that she could stab it in the middle before it could escape or harm anyone.
However, that hadn't had made it any easier for Jarred to explain himself.
"Really Gran, I have no idea how this happened." he explained, scrapping his feet on the ground. "I used two pieces of heather, one egg shell, and a handful of moth..."
"A HANDFUL OF MOTH???!!!" Demona screamed angrily. "On the list, it says only use a pinch."
Jarred winced... "Äahh, I over read it?"
Demona glared on her grandson. He was eager in learning magic, but somehow she saw trouble coming when he wouldn't become more careful with it. She had spent hours explaining to him that true magic was not as easy as in Harry Potter and he seemed to realize that, even if he was slow.
"You have to be more careful with it," she instructed him with a hard tone. "If not then you might summon creatures, which aren't as easy to defeat as this one."
Jarred nodded obediently and Demona sighed.
"It is okay," Demona explained a bit softer. "The lesson for tonight is over, but be more careful next time before you open a gateway to the underworld."
Jarred nodded and went off, up to the first floor, happy not to have provoked the wrath of his grandmother.
Demona sighed again and turned around to the mess. The Observer had knocked over some glasses and thrown a book on the ground in his fury, but not much damage. However, considering that it was just the smallest sort of its race, Demona feared what would happen when someone opened the gates to the underworld completely... well she knew it partly, but this was nothing she wanted to think about now.
Slowly, she put the magic book back in its place and threw the shattered glass in a trash can. Then she looked on the dead creature, still with her sword in its large eye and threw it in an iron-bucket.
~ Should I tell him how easily this creature could have killed him? ~ Demona thought, ~ no, he has more than enough fear already. ~
Despite the situation, Demona had to smile slightly as summoning dangerous creatures by mistake seemed to be in the genes of her family. Her grandson had summoned this Observer, Darlene the fire spirit and she...
Thoughts and images went through her mind, she and her siblings preparing for battle and an unearthly scream echoing through the night....
"Mother?"
Demona turned around and saw Darlene standing in the door upward. Demona hadn't heard her coming, something that showed her daughter how her mother was distracted.
"I heard Jarred summoned something?" Darlene asked.
Demona handed the iron-bucket over to Darlene, who eyed the content with a mixture of disgust and fear.
"How dangerous was it?" she asked.
"Not as dangerous as your elemental-spirit, but dangerous enough." Demona explained. "Please bring it out and burn it... or we'll stuff it and fix it to a wall."
"I'll burn it," Darlene replied quickly, not wanting this thing looking on her with one of its plenty of eyes. "But we really must be more careful with Jarred's magic lessons the next time."
Demona nodded.
"Sure, he is really too incautious, but at least he is interested." she said with a low accusation in his voice.
"Mother, you can't force her to be interested in magic." Darlene replied. "Lana was never interested in such."
Demona grumbled a bit, making clear that she could, but then she looked around. The green blood of the Observer slowly dried on the ground and she decided to clean it up later. Finally, she cleaned her sword with a paper cloth, hung it back to the wall and looked to her daughter.
"Well, I think it is time for dinner," Demona stated. "How does meat loaf sound tonight?"
"Sounds great mom, but..." Darlene hesitated.
~ You're the worst cook I've ever met ~ Darlene ended the sentence in her mind, but would rather eat her own tongue than tell this to her mother.
When she had lived with her mother in the first time of her life, so many years ago, she had eaten the flesh raw like the vegetable and thought that this was not any better than the human way of eating, but the only way of really enjoying eating.
The first time that she had eaten the meal that Paul had cooked for her, she believed herself to be dead and in heaven.
Darlene had hoped that being a human during the day had improved her mother's cooking talent, or at least her taste, but the first meal which was of raw fish and vegetables that Demona had made for them, proved her terribly wrong. In the afterward of this meal, her children had pleaded her to do the cooking from now on. Darlene had spoken to her mother and told her that she would cook from now on, out of gratefulness since they could live with her and since her mother earned the money.
Demona had finally agreed, reluctantly, but despite this she had insisted on cooking at least one time in the week for them.
Thursday was feared from everybody in the house.
Even after she had given up serving raw fish or flesh, Darlene wouldn't give the meals she made to a dog to eat. Somehow, her mother managed to always put too much of one sort of spice into the meal so that even Darlene had to force herself to smile when Demona served it.
"...but you still have the blood of this creature on your claws, I think it is better that I cook tonight."
Demona looked on her daughter, studying her, and then she nodded.
"Mom, Grandma," Jarred screamed from up above. "Come up here."
Mother and daughter exchanged panic-filled looks and ran quickly on all fours up to the living room where Jarred had called from. Entering it, they saw Jarred and Lana with Gem in her arms, sitting before the TV, starring on it.
"What is it Jarred?" Darlene asked, but Jarred just pointed at the TV.
Darlene looked on it and saw Travis Marshall standing before the police department in a building under an old clock tower, which didn't surprise her since through the large satellite dish they had, they could receive all channels of the whole world, but mainly they watched American TV-channels.
"...have we just received the news that Captain Maria Chavez, leader of this precinct has made an agreement with the gargoyles of this city. Seemingly they intend to form common patrols between a police officer and one gargoyle to work together against the crime in this city. The complaints about the gargoyles who used to fly above this city in order to prevent crimes have led to a stop of this just two months ago, Capitan Chavez explained she hoped...."
Darlene heard this with a slight smile, which faded completely when she heard her mother growling beside her. When she turned around to Demona, she noticed her eyes sparkling slightly red.
"Mother, what is it?" she asked, slightly perplexed, even when she foresaw the answer.
"Those goddamned fools are doing it again!" Demona snarled. "They want to protect humans by every cost."
"But isn't this what gargoyles do?" Jarred asked innocently.
Demona just stared at him, crumbling a part of the wall she had leaned against.
"IT IS NOT OUR NATURE TO PROTECT HUMANS!!!" she screamed on him, her eyes blazing dangerously red, so that Darlene rushed to her mother to be sure that she wouldn't flip out completely.
Demona ignored her daughter and looked to her grandson who looked damned scarred, as he had seen his grandma often angry since he lived with her, mainly through one of his accidents by learning magic, but never that way.
"I will tell you something about the history of our race," she started, ignoring the fact that her grandchildren were born humans. "Gargoyles are older than humans and even before they spread about the face of this planet, we protected... each other, our clans, our children and our territory. Then the humans came and since they feared us then they started to kill us, to smash us during the day, to destroy our...."
Demona closed her eyes shortly, images raced through her mind, images of blood and broken eggshells in destroyed rookeries too painful to bear.
"Then we started to make alliances with them, they protected us during the day, we them during the night. We shared our prey, they their vegetables. Sounds nice don't you think?" she asked, but before anybody could answer this, she continued. "But it wasn't! The humans fought against each other in every millennium and every time they did so, we got into their lines and had to fight fights, which weren't our own. Sometimes, we even had to fight against each other to...."
She saw the blood on her claws, blood of one of her own kind she had taken life from....
"In the end, the humans always repaid us our loyalty with contempt or worse because they simply wanted to kill us." Demona ended her speech. "Look at New York. The humans there don't want our protection, so why does the clan stay there so? Because they think that one day the humans will change their nature and see that we aren't the most dangerous race on this planet and stop hunting and killing us? They haven't done so for the entire time of their existence."
There was silence in the room while Demona's family looked on her, unknowing what to say.
Finally, Darlene began.
"Mother, they try to give their life a purpose," she started "to follow their nature to protect."
Demona shook her head.
"They are idiots who just follow a dream." she explained and the sadness in her voice was evident, "a hollow dream, which has cost the lives of most of our race."
The immortal gargress looked around and knew that no one in the room understood her, neither her daughter, nor Jarred or Lana, not even Gem had listened to her grandmother's speech and instead played with her ball on the floor, worse she saw pity in Darlene's eyes, even when hidden.
~ Why do I even speak with them? ~
More frustrated than hurt, Demona turned around and went out fast, not held back by one of them.
She found herself out on the roof of the mansion, looking around in the night.
~ They don't understand me ~
It wasn't just her daughter and her grandchildren, but seemingly no gargoyle in the world was able to understand her.
"Mother?"
Darlene's soft voice threw her out of her unfriendly thoughts.
Demona sighed.
"I didn't want to scream at them," she explained half hearty without turning around.
"They don't mind that," Darlene told her mother, walking beside her on the roof. "It is more the reason you did."
Her mother stayed quiet and since Darlene knew she could very well wait until the next ice time until her mother would speak again, she continued.
"Mother, what problems do you have with the Manhattan clan?"
~ Bingo! ~ Darlene thought when she saw how her mother's claws crumbled a bit of the facade.
"I explained this to you," Demona said icily, on a way which showed Darlene that it would be a good idea to forget the topic. It was just that she didn't want.
"You told me that they stopped you several times," Darlene admitted, "but this doesn't mean why they matter so much to you."
Demona sighed and looked up to the moon and when Darlene already believed she would stay quiet, her mother answered.
"They don't!" Demona nearly snarled. "It is just..." she tried to find the right words..., "madness!"
She clenched and unclenched her fists.
"They protect them Darlene, they wouldn't need to and the humans don't want to, but they desire to do it at any cost." Demona explained. "They risk their life for a kind that seeks to destroy us."
"Mother, stop this!" Darlene screamed on her. "Humanity does not seek to destroy us. Look at the TV; they are just learning to live with us again."
Demona shook her head, laughing without joy.
"Oh yes?" she asked sarcastically. "Well, what about the fact that our race has shrunk to a few while some were millions before humanity invaded our lands, what is this, a joke?"
"It happened so many years ago." Darlene replied. "Humanity has learned, has grown since this."
"And what are the Quarrymen for you Darlene?"
Darlene sighed, as she had heard from them. Indeed, she had gathered every bit of information about them that she could get back in L.A. Her neighbors already thought she was going to join them. Through the mask with the three blood red scars, Darlene knew well from the tales of her mother, it hadn't been hard to figure out where they came from.
"Castaway is arrested and the organization has been destroyed." Darlene told her mother. "Not all humans are like this."
"Well then daughter, if you see this so then why don't you take a little walk through Berlin." Demona suggested. "Walk through *Unter den Linden* and let Lana buy some clothes, or visit the *Brandenburger Tor* and the "Reichstag* with Jarred, from all you've told me about his love for ancient buildings, I'm sure he'll like it there..." Demona looked on her daughter and when she did not respond, she added. "Tell me how many of your human *friends* have you told of your true identity, Darlene?"
Darlene swallowed, suppressing her anger of being attacked by her mother. She never had even thought of telling one of her friends of her true identity, to protect her children she had told herself, but what were friends if she couldn't trust them completely?
"Maybe they do not fully accept us yet." Darlene admitted. "But they will one day, we have just to wait some years and..."
"STOP THIS!!!" Demona screamed on her daughter so loud that Darlene feared the neighbors could have heard this, not to mention her children. "I know this song Darlene, I knew it since 1000 years from every place in the world: *we have to wait,* *but we need the alliance...,* *you must have trust in them my Angel...*"
Demona stopped, breathing heavily and angry of having revealed too much.
~ *My Angel* ~ Darlene thought meanwhile. ~ She told me once that her first love Goliath had called her so... ~
"I'm sick of this old song, so please don't start it too daughter," Demona explained. "The fact is that they don't change, however much time passes, and I think deep down you know this, but you fear the consequences of this idea like the clan in New York does."
"What you say is wrong mother, it never was." Darlene told her. "Humanity has learned much and they will learn to live with us."
Demona looked on her daughter, as seemingly she had learned nothing.
"You would fit in well with them Darlene." she explained to her daughter and finally gave it up.
"I'll go and do a bit of gliding," she told her daughter, "don't wait on me with the dinner."
With this and before her daughter could hold her back, she leaped into the sky and flew into the night.
Darlene looked on her mother's figure, vanishing in the night and sighed unhappily, knowing that she wasn't able to reach her mother.
20.07.98; 23:12; Destine Mansion Potsdam:
Luckily Demona had just made a short glide and was back just before the meal was served, nobody had an interest to continue the recent topic,
Demona ate some of the meal her daughter had cooked, even though she had no interest in them since it was a much too human-like meal.
"How does it taste?" Darlene asked her, having noticed the frown on her mother's face and stopped shortly from feeding Gem with another spoon of her baby food.
"It is..." Demona hesitated, not finding the right words, "German."
"I find it great mum." Jarred stated, taking his third portion. "What is it?"
"The Germans call it *Spätzle*." Darlene explained to her son with the seemingly never ending hunger. "It is originally from Saxon."
"Mpfhh," Lana stated from the other end of the table, reading her magazine that she had ordered from the USA, one of the few things of her old life which were left to her.
"Lana, lay that magazine down and look on what you are eating." Darlene ordered her daughter.
Angrily, she followed her mother's order and forced herself to eat.
"Mum, can we go into the movie I told you about?" Jarred asked eagerly, while taking a break in eating.
Darlene sighed, as her son had bombarded her with this the whole month. She disliked the idea of sneaking into a cinema, but on the other hand, he really missed a lot through his transformation....
She nodded.
"We will all go," she promised him, "tomorrow."
Lana groaned.
"Mum, I'm too old for Disney movies..." she said, "They are just something for little kids... or hatchlings."
"HEY!" Jarred screamed, embarrassed, as he hated being called little.
"Lana," Darlene began calmly. "I want to go see this movie too. Besides, you need to glide out again, you haven't for a week."
"I don't want to go out *gliding*," she burst out angrily. "I want to go out shopping, or to see what this boring city has to offer for me."
"Lana, we go through the city every month." Darlene told her upset daughter.
"Yes, we visit it once in a month, but I can never try on new clothes since they don't fit my new form under the illusion spell and I have to be ever watchful that someone doesn't step on my tail." Lana reminded her mother angrily, with her eyes growing slightly red. "And the dogs bark after us."
"Lana, ENOUGH," Darlene told her eldest child sternly. "We want to relish this meal."
Lana looked angrily on her mother, but stayed quiet.
Jarred looked on the scene with bored eyes, such arguments came quite often since they had moved in with their grandmother.
Gem on the other hand had started to wail in her high chair, twice due to the fact that her mother had stopped feeding her and since she felt the tension in the air, which she definitely didn't like.
Darlene finally led her eyes away from her eldest daughter to her youngest and soothed her by softly stroking her fair hair, but even doing so she still studied her eldest who had taken up her magazine again.
~ If only it was as easy to help her, as it is to help you ~ she spoke mentally to her youngest child.
Gem didn't notice and smeared some food on her bib with her small claws.
"What movie are you going to see?" Demona asked finally.
Darlene, Jarred and Lana looked on her in total surprise, as the immortal gargoyle had never been interested in such *human things*.
"Mulan," Darlene explained to her mother.
Demona raised an eyebrow.
"It is cool granny!" Jarred told his grandmother eagerly. "Mulan is a girl in China, who fights against the cruel Mongol by hiding herself as a man, there will be fights and blood and tension!!!!"
"Mphhh," Demona snorted, "the humans tend to play down everything. Back then they wouldn't have given their females a role in their army, as much danger as they were in. I always wondered whether the Mongols had made the most problems to them."
"You were there?" Jarred asked with large eyes, his grandmother's life became more exciting with each day that passed. "In old China when the Mongols came?"
Demona looked on her grandchild.
*She smelled the taste of flesh, still strange to her, coming out of the houses. She heard the others standing on the roofs beside her, she felt her armor on her skin, and the sword on her side.... the night would bring blood, as she could feel it. "They come!" A voice screamed....*
"Yes," she responded simply and looked back on her meal, making clear to everybody that she was not willing to reveal this chapter of her life.
Darlene sighed, unheard by this.
~ But how many chapters have you ever revealed? ~
"Uhh, granny, maybe you could..." Jarred hesitated "Come with us?"
Demona shook her head, but before she could make her point perfectly clear, her grandson added.
"I mean, you could tell me afterwards something about this time," Jarred began, "and it would be much more fun with you."
The immortal looked on her grandson, more than skeptically.
"Pleaseeeeeeeee!" he added.
Demona shrugged her shoulders.
"Tomorrow I have a meeting with an envoy of Xanacorps," she explained, much to her surprise and that of everybody else at the table. "I will see if I will have enough time to come with you."
Jarred eyes sparkled with happiness while Darlene looked on her mother in wonder, who looked now back on her meal.
Demona indeed wondered about herself.
~ I am becoming soft ~ she thought.
On the other hand, maybe she was just in a good mood since Nightstone was going to overgrow Xanacorps.
Demona looked around at the table, her daughter feeding Gem, Jarred eating his third portion and Lana reading the magazine. A warm feeling she had long forgotten came up into her heart and despite all that she knew and as much as she tried, Demona couldn't suppress it.
21.07.98; 03:24; Destine Mansion Potsdam:
Lana sat in her room and looked on the ceiling above her, her arms crossed behind her head. She wasn't thinking of anything special when a knock sounded on the door.
"Forget it; you won't get my other CDs!" Lana screamed without rising from the bed.
Despite this, the door opened.
"I..." Lana started, rising from her bed, but then realized that the person coming in wasn't her brother.
She sank back.
"What is it mom?" she asked unenthusiastically while her mother closed the door behind her.
"This is what I wanted to ask you." Darlene said and sat herself beside her daughter.
When her daughter didn't respond, Darlene sighed.
"Lana, I know it is hard for you, but..."
"Oh you know?" Lana asked sarcastically, raising herself from the bed and looking at her mother angrily. "Were you the best cheerleader of the school? Did you have the best boy of the school taking a look on you? Did you have a life and friends you truly miss?!"
Tears welled up in Lana's eyes, but when her mother tried to lay a claw upon her shoulder, she jumped up from the bed.
"NO!" Lana screamed on her. "No mom, no calming down, no *everything will be alright*! You can't change us back even when you promised it and you haven't even tried it."
This however was something that Darlene couldn't accept.
"I spent the first month searching in every book that your grandmother has." Darlene told her daughter, but she merely turned around and looked angrily out the window. "I even over read them twice. She has no spell to change us back into humans."
Lana turned around again, looking to her mother.
"Are you sure about this?" Lana asked her mother critically. "I think she would rather die than to allow us to change back into our true forms."
"Lana," Darlene told her oldest daughter sternly. "Don't talk about your grandmother in that way."
"It is true and you know it," Lana replied and crossed her arms. "She wouldn't even look at us if we were humans."
Darlene looked at her daughter, as she knew what her daughter said was partly the truth. When she had changed herself into a human, she had been dead to her mother, even so her children.
"She doesn't lie, believe me at least that." Darlene told her. "I would know if she did, she doesn't know of a way to make us human again."
~ Which doesn't mean that she wouldn't be able to find one if she were to search really hard. ~ Darlene added mentally.
"Then..." Lana made gestures with her claws. "Then you could force her to summon this Fay that made her human during the day. This Pock... I would be happy if I could be human at least during the day than instead of being forced to be a statue."
"The mirror that she summoned *Puck* with has been destroyed, as she told you," Darlene explained to her daughter. "And even if she were able to do so, I wouldn't ask her to." she sighed. "Lana… besides the fact that capturing anyone innocent, whether they are Human, Gargoyle or Fey, and get them to do what you want is wrong, as it is dangerous."
While Darlene explained this, she leaned against a wall.
"Look at your grandmother, she asked for staying flesh during the day, not being human by sunlight. Who knows what a Fey would do to us if it turned us during the day?"
"God, even if I could go back," Lana started, "not one of my friends would talk to me anymore. Tanya wrote that..."
Lana bid her lip, as she had said too much, which she knew from the look on her mother's face.
"You made contact with Tanya?" Darlene asked, frowning, and when Lana stayed silent she added even harder, "Lana!"
"Yes, I had contact with her." Lana told her mother and before her mother could say something, she added, "Mum, I had to say something to her, at least say goodbye."
"Lana, I understand," Darlene told her daughter softly, coming nearer to her, "but we can't risk that, we can't risk that anybody, maybe our creditors or even the police follows our track and find us."
"Don't fear mom, I won't talk to her again, or better yet she won't..." Lana looked into her mother's eyes, her own red from crying. "She told me that she would stop being my friend if I didn't tell her the truth and I..."
The last words were stopped when Lana started sobbing, but her mother could imagine what they would have been, very well. Darlene held her child, embracing her with her wings and softly led her to the bed.
When her daughter had calmed down a bit, Darlene looked into her face, stroking Lana's hair.
"I want my life back mom." Lana finally told her. "I want friends, even school...."
"Shhhhh," Darlene shushed her, while she laid Lana's head on her lap like she had done when Lana was but a little child. "One day you will have a new and wonderful life Lana, I will see to this."
"You promise?" Lana asked, sleepy from the much crying.
"Yes," her mother replied honestly. "Now take a nap and get some rest."
Lana felt too weak to reply and finally fell asleep.
Darlene looked on her eldest daughter's peaceful face. She was lonely and Darlene could understand this all too well, remembering the days that she had felt lonely herself, despite the fact that she had had her mother.
~ What if she runs away too? ~
This idea crossed her mind so fast that she was unable stop it and even though it was just a thought, it brought Darlene's heart to contract in pain.
~ This must have been something like how my mother felt~ Darlene thought, regretting the pain that she had brought over her mother.
~ But I had no choice... ~
She knew this wasn't true, since there was forever a choice.
While she laid her daughter's head on the bed, Darlene vowed to herself that she wouldn't allow her daughter to feel alone and when she went silently, as her mother had taught her, through the door, she decided to talk with her mother about this, at any opportunity.
Somewhere, some when:
The flame-haired gargoyle youngster stood amongst her siblings, chattering happily with her caramel-skinned sister and some of her other sisters when the teacher gave the signal and they leaped in the air one by one.
She gave it her best, but somehow she missed the connection with her sibling and fell back. By trying to compensate this with more speed, she missed the point where they had to make a roll in the air and did it faster than she was able to control it.
She got too much drive and couldn't control her gliding back since an unfavorable wind drove her with it. So out of control was the young gargoyle that she did not land on her two feet, neither on all fours, but hit the soft earth with her face, loosing her tiara and swallowing earth.
All of her siblings landed gracefully like angels, looking on their incompetent sister gloatingly and some even with pity.
"Look, she glides like a hen and lands even so." her brother with the deformed horn stated laughing.
"I've seen hatchlings on their first flight, land better." a female explained, scornfully. "What is it sister? Can't manage it?"
The red-haired lass spit the earth out of her mouth, trying to defend herself. Trying to say that it wasn't her fault, that an updraft had hit her and that she missed the signal, but no words came out of her mouth and she felt how tears were forming in her eyes, which was even worse than everything before.
"Oh look, she cries like a baby." the green skinned brother with the breastplate, whom she had ever believed to like her, explained laughing and all her siblings joined in.
Then she noticed a shadow falling on her in the moonlight and looked up, the teacher stood there, looking down on her with hard eyes.
"I am really very disappointed in you lassie." she explained simply and the fiery haired gargoyle youngster felt her heart cracking.
"Arghhh..." Dominique awoke with a slight scream and looked around.
She was in her mansion, sleeping on the couch in her night-clothes and felt that the sun would sink soon
~ Just a dream ~ she thought to calm herself down ~ just a dream ~
But she knew that what was going to come was damned real...
21.07.98; 21:12; Destine Mansion Potsdam:
"I really don't know if I can do this Gran." Jarred said unsure.
"You can," Demona explained. "Have faith and trust in yourself, grandson."
Jarred nodded and took the book, closing his eyes to remember the spell that he had practiced to cast the previous night.
"Come on Harry, we don't have all night." Lana complained, who had leaned against the wall, just to be silenced by her mother who gave her a hard glance, knowing how important this was for Jarred.
"Lingua alien nunc lingua nosce est." the sorceress's apprentice intoned and a slight glimmer laid about everybody in the room.
"Has it worked?" Jarred asked insecure.
Demona didn't answer, but switched the TV on and a rather large nurse with yellow hair appeared on the screen, the logo of RTL in the up left area of the monitor.
"I can't believe you did this Dr. Smith." she said.
A large man with brown hair and a rather arrogant looking face, seemingly a doctor turned around.
"Ah Nikola," he told her coolly, "have you brought my coffee?"
"You arrogant...."
Demona switched the TV off.
"Yes, it worked," Demona replied. "Well done."
"Yippy!" Jarred screamed and jumped in the air. "I'm the greatest sorcerer in the world."
Demona looked on this act of exaggeration with crossed arms. Despite the fact that she was proud on him, exaggeration was never healthy for a sorcerer and especially not for a wannabe sorcerer like her grandson, but before she could say something, her daughter began.
"Well, the greatest for this maybe, but you will still need some years." Darlene told him. "But for now, we have to go."
With this, the family went onto the balcony, except Demona who had told her family that she had to make a telephone conference with the envoy of Xanatos, since they hadn't come to an agreement last time... which was as near by the truth as Demona could go. Jarred had been disappointed to say the least, but accepted his grandmother's decision.
Unfortunately, Gem had been rather restless and whiny tonight, so Darlene had asked her mother to baby-sit. Demona had agreed, forced by the fact that she had no arguments against this... not one she could tell her daughter anyway.
For one second, she had thought about telling her daughter everything, but it was too soon, much too soon.
So, she now held her youngest grandchild in her arms, who was being fussed over by Darlene.
"You won't have any problems will you?" Darlene asked her mother for the tenth time.
Demona sighed.
~ By the dragon I hope so ~
"I think I can care for her in the four hours you are away, yes." she explained to her. "I do have some experience with hatchlings, daughter. Now go, before you miss the start."
Darlene nodded, not really assured by the unusual arguments of her mother, but Jarred had already leaped in the sky and so she followed.
Demona looked on until the forms of her family disappeared into the night, then she turned to her the infant in her arms.
"So, you will now take a little nap, won't you?" she asked her granddaughter and carried Gem into her room.
Thirty minutes later, she was asleep and Demona was at the end of her nerves before the evening had really started. To say that Gem had been reluctant to take a nap so early was an understatement. Demona had to sing her whole lullabies that she knew as a rookery mother and all the rookery songs she knew from 1000 years to get her to fall asleep in her cradle.
When she had sneaked out of the room and closed the door, she sighed in relief that she had enough time to clean the living room of any sign that she didn't live alone.... Indeed, she was so relieved that she hadn't notice two little eyes opening slowly.
21.07.98; 22:02; Destine Mansion Potsdam:
Demona had just gathered the last of the Mickey Mouse comics, which Jarred had left lying there despite what she and Darlene had ordered him countless times not to do so, when she heard the sound of wings from outside the glass door. Lacking of any other way, she threw them away in the burning fire of the chimney and turned around to see Deborah coming in... The older gargoyle did not look happy.
When Deborah had closed the balcony door, Demona finally took a deep breath.
"Deborah," she greeted her.
Deborah, while she went to her, looked on Demona in a way which let her know that she would rather swallow her own tongue than to give her former pupil a nice word.
This was the moment when Demona noticed Gem coming out of the door behind Deborah, crawling on all fours and searching for something to explore.
~ Oh crap! ~ Demona thought, a word mostly used by Lana, trying hard to hide her surprise from her teacher.
Deborah now stood before Demona and studied her critically. The immortal knew that her teacher didn't like what she saw, but she was too captured by seeing how Gem looked on Deborah with innocent curiosity in her blue eyes.
~ Damn, damn, damn ~ Demona cursed herself for not having cast a sleeping spell on the baby.
"I've come a long way for this Demona." Deborah, unaware and never dreaming of who was behind her back, told her. "Now come, explain yourself."
"On what do you relate on?" Demona asked her old teacher, more so because she was too busy looking on Gem than she wanted to evade.
"ON YOUR BETRAYAL!!!" Deborah screamed on her, "ON AN EXCUSE FOR YOUR PITIFUL EXISTENCE!!!"
~ Okay, this was clear ~ Demona thought while she tried to hide a wincing.
"Well," Deborah silently demanded, icily.
Demona actually gulped, as Gem crawled right over to Deborah's tail and looked as though she was about to start chewing on it.
"Maybe we should continue this conversation in the drawing room," Demona asked quickly and grabbed Deborah's arm. "It'll be much more confortable in there and I'm sure you'll want to sit down before you LEAVE!"
She said 'leave' slightly louder, hoping that Gem would get the message, despite the fact that she was only an infant. Thankfully, Deborah's tail got out of the way of Gem's path as Demona practically dragged her all the way to the drawing room.
Gem, disappointed of having lost a toy, crawled to the seat, climbing up with her sharp talons and looked around.
"No thank you!" Deborah snarled, seized her arm back from Demona and went back to sit down. "I'm perfectly fine here!"
"Oh, but... LOOK OUT!" Demona shrieked, as Deborah went to sit down... right on top of Gem.
Deborah paused and looked at Demona as if she'd gone insane, an explanation which some in the clan favoured.
"I will sit wherever I want to!" Deborah snarled on Demona and asked herself again who had failed to teach this lass manners, before she remembered that this would have been her duty.
Demona gulped again, as her old teacher's tail which was now swinging angrily, just in the reach of Gem's little claws. The immortal gargoyle noticed how her granddaughter's mouth, which already had many sharp teeth, was looking up almost hungrily at the lashing tail and made a decision.
"Well old teacher." she told her, calling her by a name she knew Deborah hated. "I'll be in the kitchen making a meal."
With this, Demona turned around and left the room as fast as she could without letting it look as if she was fleeing, she felt Deborah following her.
"COME HERE YOU COWARD, WE WILL TALK NOW!!!" Deborah screamed on her former pupil, following her on the tail.
When they entered the kitchen, Demona went to the cupboard with the glasses in it.
"Something to drink?" she offered.
Deborah simply snarled on her, but before she could say anything, something on the kitchen-table drew her attention.
Demona followed her teacher's eyes and nearly winced, as there stood a bowl, half full of cornflakes and an open packet of Kellog's Frosties on the table.
Deborah gave Demona a doubtful look, which let Demona know that she had to explain herself.
~ Damn it, I must talk to Jarred about clearing up after himself~ she thought.
"Well, is there any problem with my choice of meals?" Demona replied, despite the fact that this wasn't really her sort of meal.
Deborah's eyes became blood red again.
Meanwhile, Gem was bored of being left alone by her grandmother and the strange gargoyle, so she decided to crawl after them.
She had just reached the door when her grandmother, seeing her, closed the door before the infant gargoyle's nose. Gem made some complaining noises, which were not heard by the gargoyles on the other side of the door since they were *debating* heavily and after she found out that she was unable to open the door with her tiny claws, she decided to go back into the living room to find anything interesting.
But there was nothing new, all her toys which were usually laying around there had been moved away, so the infant decided to climb onto the seat once again. Having done so, she yawned and rolled into a ball, chewing on her tail, now feeling so tired to take a real nap.
Gem didn't know how long the time had past when loud voices awaked her anew.
"It is a miracle for me that you passed the tests and ascended in those days." Deborah told Demona, running through the living room followed by her. "You have the spiritual maturity of a hatchling, but not the feeling or responsibility like one of them."
With this, she reached the balcony door and looked around to her former pupil for the final time.
"You disappoint me," she declared quietly, nearly inaudible, before she went through the door and vanished, but while she leaped into the sky, a weird thought went through her mind.
~ Did I truly see a hatchling sleeping on the seat? ~
Deborah banished this thought, based on the fact that the hatchling had looked much like Demona had once and decided that it had to be an illusion of her upset mind.
Meanwhile, in the Destine Mansion, Demona watched after the silhouette of her old teacher, as long as she could and was studied by her granddaughter.
Gem, having climbed down the seat again, crawled to her grandmother wanting her to play with her, but instead her grandmother ignored her, closed the door and turned to the chimney.
Gem looked on her grandmother, wondering about her strange behavior and that she hadn't picked her up like she usually did and was about to wail about this when Demona's eyes glowed red and she threw a nearby Vase against the wall.
The infant looked on this in fear and fascination and even more so when she saw how Demona sank to the floor with tears streaming down her face. Gem couldn't see a reason why her babysitter should cry and crawled up to her to explore what had happened, but Demona still ignored her and when Gem noticed this, she started to cry herself.
This, more than any gun shots or explosions could have done, led Demona's attention back to the world outside and made her grab her granddaughter and embrace her.
"It is okay," she told the infant softly, looking directly into her large eyes while rocking her. "Your grandmother has just had a bit of trouble, this is all."
Slowly, Gem calmed down and started to grab after her grandmother's tiara and, unusual to her usual behavior, Demona allowed her to take it.
"Be careful with it won't you?" she told her softly, tickling Gem on the belly while the infant tasted the tiara.
Would a visitor, just at this moment, have come in then he wouldn't have recognized the mighty and terrible Demona. Without her golden tiara and her eyes looking softly on the baby in her lap, she looked like another person, a softer person indeed.
Suddenly, Demona's body tensed and Gem, sensing this, stopped chewing on the tiara and looked up at her grandmother in wonder.
The thought about the possibilities of what this feeling could mean and the consequences... then she looked into her granddaughter's eyes, her own filled with worry.
"There is no way for me Gem." she told her youngest grandchild. "It has to end, finally."
With this, she stood up with Gem securely in her arms and started to figure out what to do, what she knew had to be done.
22.07.98; 00:42; In the air about Destine Mansion:
"Yuchu!" Jarred screamed and made a looping in the air, enjoying his body like he did every night.
"The movie was great!" he told his sister, gliding beside her. "The fights and how Mulan started the avalanche..."
"I heard it airhead!" Lana told him angrily, as she definitely did not share his view on the movie neither had she much fun in gliding.
"Lana," Darlene told her daughter while they landed, "be nice."
Lana grumbled, but stayed quiet.
Darlene sighed and opened the balcony door.
"Mother, we're home." Darlene called and looked around.
The living room looked cleaned up, Gem's toys lay orderly in one corner and everything else seemed somehow cleaned up. It was just that something seemed missing....
"Daughter," Demona greeted her, coming in with Gem in her arms.
"Mother, has everything been fine?" Darlene asked, taking Gem from her grandmother's arms and cuddling the infant.
"Yes," she explained. "I have changed her and given her a bottle."
This was when Jarred noticed something.
"Grandma, where is the Ming Vase?" he asked.
"Gem crushed it." Demona lied, led by her instinct, blaming the innocent hatchling.
Darlene looked critically on her youngest daughter, who gulped in her arms.
"I hadn't been watchful for one second..." Demona explained. "She is like you were as a hatchling."
This was when Darlene noticed the dirt on the wall where the vase had hit the wall.
~ It is unlikely that Gem is a little Hercules ~ Darlene thought, looking critically first on the infant in her arms, then on her mother before her. ~ You're lying mother. ~
"I assume your talk with Xanatos's envoy wasn't successful?" Darlene assumed, knowing all too well how angry her mother could become when something didn't work out the way she wanted it too.
Demona swallowed, then she nodded.
"We haven't... come to a common point." she explained. "So I have to talk with Xanatos personally."
"You'll be making a business trip to New York?" Jarred asked.
~ You could call it that. ~ Demona thought.
"Yes."
22.07.98; 04:42am; Destine Mansion, Demona's work room, Berlin:
When Darlene entered the room, her mother looked up from her PC where she was working on the details of her business trip.
"Mom, we have to talk." Darlene told her mother.
Demona nodded and leaned back in her chair.
"About what?" she asked while her daughter took a seat on the chair before the desk.
"The Manhattan clan," Darlene told her mother and if her mother hadn't taught her so well in studying a person's body language, she would have missed the slight shiver that went through Demona's body completely.
"What about them?" Demona asked in a neutral voice with eyes as hard as steel.
~ Okay, let us start it another way. ~ Darlene thought.
"How many members has the clan got?" she asked.
Demona didn't reply at first, but studied her daughter for some seconds and Darlene could almost see her mother's sharp mind, working behind the green eyes of a predator.
"Large," she explained. "But the answer of your true question is yes, there are gargoyles about Lana's age."
Darlene looked on her mother, not wondering how she had found out about her and Paul.
"You know why I ask." she told her mother. "So please, can't you..."
"NO!" Demona blocked her daughter's question, her eyes shining red. "I will not!"
"Mother!" Darlene said angrily, "at least let me speak out! Or at the very least, let me finish a sentence."
Demona placed her claws on the desk and looked straight into Darlene's face.
"I have better things to do there than to speak with a clan of human-protectors."
This was a lie, indeed this was the main reason why she was going there.... amongst other things.
But Darlene didn't know, so she continued.
"Mother, you told me that you had trouble with them because they stopped your attempt to destroy humanity." Darlene said and added mentally ~ for which I am very thankful. ~ "But since you have stopped it," ~ at least I hope so, ~ "maybe you could better your relationship with them?"
Demona glared at Darlene, but allowed her to continue.
"I don't mean that you have to try and become a clan member," she said, "but that you declare a treaty, so that you... we could live there."
"Darlene, I explained it to you many times why I can't." Demona told her daughter. "We are too different; too many things stand between us and ever will."
"How do you know this when you have never tried?" Darlene accused her angrily.
Demona was going to say that she knew very well, but bit her tongue in the last second, this would have revealed too much.
"I know it." she explained and turned back to the PC, showing that for her the discussion was over.
But it wasn't for Darlene.
"What about other clans." Darlene asked her mother. "You once told me that there were other clans that you knew."
Demona looked up from the monitor and Darlene believed to see a pained expression in her mother's eyes for half of a second.
"I even so have my many differences with them." Demona explained coolly. "Maybe not as large as with the Manhattan clan, but they make problems too."
~ Just once, do you ever think that you might be the problem mother? ~ Darlene pleaded mentally, but bit her lip.
"Mother, I can't force you to do so, but for Lana's sake please try." While Darlene did so, she laid her claw about her mothers. "Mother, of all people in the world, you should know best how painful it is to be alone." She looked at her mother with eyes, which had forever been able to touch her soul. "Please, don't let Lana go through this just because of your pride."
Demona looked long into her daughter's eye and finally she nodded.
"I will see what I can do," she explained, "but I promise nothing."
Darlene smiled.
"Thank you mother."
Demona grumbled and fell back into her chair, looking straight on the monitor, which showed Darlene that it was over, on which she slowly left the room.
Demona's eyes followed her back until her daughter was gone, then she leaned back in the chair. She knew that it had to come one day, she had not made herself any illusions about this even when her foolish heart had wished otherwise sometimes, but that it came now....
"This will complicate things." the immortal whispered and forced herself back to look on the PC.
To be continued...